When Reason goes out the window, Ridicule pulls up a chair

Open Letter to Ontario Farm And Food Care (And Their “Security Squad”)

According to the Toronto Sun, Ontario farmers have developed a “security squad” against animal activists. The paper reports that farmers are monitoring activities online and calling out this squad on a moment’s notice when activists appear on farms or meetings. The Sun goes on to report that:

“Kristen Kelderman of Farm & Food Care says the Guelph, Ont.-based non-profit works “behind the scenes” to see what activists are planning and to prepare for a response.

Farm & Food Care has a hotline farmers can use to call in the emergency squad.”

The Farm and Food Care newsletter and website, which has curiously been down all day at the time of writing, also expressed concern about ATI requests (Access to Information) that were being received and processed by the government as it concerned information about farming practices. Your organization also recommends that farmers record license numbers of vehicles on the street near their farms, which smacks of DEFCON-5 level conspiracist thinking. Would I be a conspiracist if I thought that your newsletter was taken down to scrub it free of incriminating information about dealing with the OSPCA and the Access to Information enquiries?

First off, please be reminded that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is entrenched in Canada’s constitution, guarantees freedom of peaceful assembly in section 2(c) If you truly had a security problem, wouldn’t your organization be better off calling the police rather than some nebulous team you’ve assembled? To me, that suggests that what you’re encountering isn’t illegal activity at all, but instead activity that you would somehow like your “security squad” to intimidate and suppress.

Cases of animal abuse are widespread and well-documented and they are not isolated incidents. Any time someone turns on the video camera, they can find abuse because it is standard industry practice–and for a very good reason. Abusive practices enable farmers to control profit margins. The more animals are crammed into smaller spaces, moved quicker through assembly lines, and treated as commodities instead of the sentient animals they are, the more money to be made. Thanks to activists, we now know that grinding live chicks up in a wood-chipper-machine or suffocating chicks in plastic bags is standard practice, as is grinding up piglets and back-feeding them to other pigs. This practice, when it happened with cow feed, caused the 2003 Bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis when governments failed to regulate heat-treating in feed plants to ensure it was sufficient to denature prions, which carry the disease between individuals and cause deterioration of the brain.

If you are a farmer, agricultural industry manager or worker, do you feel good about everything you do? Are you being honest with everyone about your operations? Most activists are simply advocating for humane farming practices – that animals should not be forced to live in torment. Those who wish to expose those practices are not terrorists. If jamming pregnant female animals into crates so tight that they can’t lie down or turn around for months is such a delightfully ethical practice, why aren’t tours being arranged for school kids? Why not show them chicks being tossed into the wood chipper? Let the poor harassed farmers shine a light onto their humane farms! Because they have nothing to hide…..right? If your membership has nothing to hide, why are they instructed to contact your organization if they become aware of an ATI (Access to Information Request) for their industry?

I do not respect your attempts to try and criminalize activism. Please respect the right of thoughtful citizens to express what they see as a moral outrage. Animal abuse videos have mobilized a movement towards improving the quality of life of pigs, chickens, and cows. Frequently, “abuse” is a product of farmers feeling rushed or cutting corners. I resent the comments sometimes made by far right groups that these videos are edited or compile days of footage distilled down to a few short minutes of cruelty. This is like saying “we didn’t mistreat any animals for the other 23 hours and 57 minutes, so the 3 minutes we did doesn’t count.”

In the absence of the animal welfare movement, there is an obvious race to the bottom. Battery cages and gestation crates are a classic example of this, while the quality of life of a chicken or pig in a bigger more enriched cage is improved, farmers or agribusiness won’t make these investments unless there exists political pressure. This political pressure comes from us activists.

Please don’t give your membership advice on how to support animal cruelty. Most of the activists I know personally are a bunch of mainstream, milquetoast environmentalists and animal lovers who are about as “dangerous” as the Rotary Club. I don’t know anyone who personally protests at farms, but as long as they stay on public property, they have a right to be there. You don’t have any problem “infiltrating” our meetings, and following our activity online, but you have a little problem with a quid pro quo? Seems rather hypocritical to me.

Oh yeah, always remember to be on the alert for suspicious compassionate people. You never know when one will sneak up and hug you.

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About heatherclemenceau

Hopefully as I've grown older I've also grown wiser, but one thing I've definitely become cognizant of is the difference between making a living and making a life. Frequently outraged by some of life's cruelties, and respect diversity. But.....I don't suffer fools gladly, and occasionally, this does get me into some trouble!
I have the distinction of being the world's worst golfer - no wait, I do believe that there is a gypsy in Moldavia who is a worse golfer than I. Nor am I much of a dancer - you won't see a booty-shakin' flygirl routine from me! I'm also not the kind of cook who can whip up a five-course meal on a radiator either! And I've never figured out how to get an orchid to bloom a second time.
I love to discuss literature, science, philosophy, and sci-fi , or even why Seinfeld is funny on so many levels. Words move me. I'm very soft-hearted about most things, especially animals, but I have a stoicism about me that is sometimes interpreted incorrectly. I do have a definite edge and an often "retro-adolescent" sense of humour at times.
I'm a big advocate of distributed computing projects to advance science. Check out http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ if you want to find out more.
I'm an eclectic plant-based eater, and as such, it's a personal practice of mine to seduce innocent meat-eaters into cruising the (salad) bars at every opportunity. You would be powerless to resist. I was recently surprised to find that a computer algorithm concluded that I write like Dan Brown, which is funny because I didn't think Dan Brown could actually write. Check out your own style - http://iwl.me/
Oh, and I love impractical shoes and funky hats.

The photos I’ve seen on this site are of free-range chickens, no battery cages. What’s revealing are not only the conditions of the barn, but the practices that go into it. And all chickens, no matter how they are raised, die the same way. Thanks Andalvin……

Heather, it sounds like desperation.
With the US disgust about Tyson and various retailers, it seems that Canada is on the same track. We are refusing to support Big Corporate Ag and the movement here is toward veganism. Can you blame educated and intelligent consumers for wanting Corporate Ag gone?
As consumers, we are tired of the endless ripoffs. It appears that consumers all over the world are also reacting to the abuse. We are tired of the price-gouge and the lying. We are very concerned about all animals, regardless of species. We are worried about the medical effects of these toxic products on family members. The data is there. So, logically, we are not receptive to the whining from these longtime offenders.
At this point, ending sales for horse slaughter is the way in to defeating tax-subsidized Corporate Ag. We are fighting the insidious tax scam from corrupt Congress members who want horse slaughter plants here again. After that, as Ag knows, killing animals of all species is to end. That is the objective.
Ag is fully aware of that goal and is not going to give up without a fight. After all, cash is all they care about.
If Ag and the horse industry had not tried to re-start kill plants here in the US in 2011, we would not have known what they were up to. As it is, they are on notice and anything they do is up for observation and reports. No amount of harassment or lying will stop us from persisting in our goal: no killing, no torture, no kill plants, no factory farms, no “use” of animals of any species for any industry. That is big cash lost for the killers and their corrupt buddies in “elected” offices all over the US. We will fight that battle as long as it exists.
Every day, more data is published and more consumers and taxpayers become aware of this scam. We will make sure to track votes on these issues, if votes ever happen. As long as John Boehner (Ohio) and Mitch McConnell (Ky) and other corrupt officials are permitted to occupy public office, we will have ripoff industries which torture and kill our best friends and poison consumers. The usual lying is expected. We have all heard it before.
The consumer path is clear: remove the money coming from consumers and taxpayers and destroy the market. Don’t buy. That matters to Corporate Ag and its buddies in horseracing, the AQHA, the US Hunt Jump Assoc, the AVMA, etc.
Don’t spend at retailers who give shelf space to these toxic products. When the money leaves, so will this foul and criminal sector of the consumer market.
Starve these corporate criminals out.
Contact corporate offices through Hoovers or Vault and make it clear why you will no longer hand them cash.
Write media.
If you live in a food desert, cut the spending. Punish retailers who purvey these toxic products and who feature abused live animals in retail settings.
Whatever these offenders do, make them pay for what they are doing to consumers and to animals of any species.

To contact the US Congress and agencies, click on http://www.USA.gov.
The SAFEAct is not passed and we have very limited time before Congress members will try to install kill plants here again.
Persistence wins and I know Canadians will keep fighting to end the corporate hell for animals and human beings.

I myself wonder about the legalities of using a “security squad.” I mean, what is this exactly? A hired security firm? A group of volunteers scouring FB for posts? I would hope that’s all it would be, because sending people into the field to confront protesters, after the article specifically said “Don’t argue with them” would seem pretty foolish. On an aside, I found this interesting article about the horsemeat crisis and the criminal elements. You might find it interesting. While I don’t agree with all the premises in the blog post, it raises some serious questions about what culpability, if any, consumers play for the horsemeat scandal – http://themakingprogressblues.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/horse-meat-the-hardest-thing-to-digest-is-that-its-your-fault/

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